Old Civic Spaces in New Digital Places: Theorising Kenya’s Digital Civil Society

The concept of a digital civil society is a fluid one given how dramatically the space changes daily. Yet, as Kenya’s experience with the 2017 election highlights, it has become unequivocally important to understand the broad contours of how citizens are organising, creating and distributing information, and generally crafting and deploying their political identities online. Drawing from her book, ‘Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet Era is Transforming Politics in Kenya’, Nyabola will discuss the ways in which technology is intersecting with politics in the broadest sense in Kenya, leading to an interesting demonstrations of agency and creativity in the civic space.  

Nanjala Nyabola is a writer, independent researcher and political analyst currently based in Nairobi, Kenya. Her work focuses on conflict and post conflict transitions, with a focus on refugees and migration, as well as East African politics generally. Her work has appeared in numerous publications including Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, Al Jazeera, World Politics Review, as well as chapters in edited collections. She is the author of “Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet Era is Transforming Kenya” and the co-editor of “Where Women Are: Gender and the 2017 Kenyan Elections”. Nanjala holds a BA in African Studies and Political Science from the University of Birmingham, an MSc in Forced Migration and an MSc in African Studies, both from the University of Oxford, which she attended as a Rhodes Scholar, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. 

Speakers

• Nanjala Nyabola - Writer, Researcher, Political Analyst
• Toussaint Nothias - Postdoctoral Fellow, Digital Civil Society Lab

More Info

Please RSVP to: hnrbnsn at stanford dot edu